Don't worry about hit/exp cap as a bear until you can do 7.5% hit and 15% exp... 7.5 exp is not worth aiming for as a goal.

As for this fight, I open with hotw (int pot and sp weapons) while the monk tanks, to allow 8 people (3 healing but a smite priest) to burst over 100k dps for the hero opener. Then I growl/weapon swap (saves on gcds as while you weapon swap you can hit growl and get into bear form) and build up rage so when im tanking, i have full rage. Then it's a case of maintaining maximum uptime on SD, popping SI about 8 seconds before I go in. I really dont get hit much doing this on the fight.

Stone guard is bad for bears as our mastery is worthless versus the bleed, but on all other fights bears rule (elegon, for example, FR is buffed 50% so I tend to FR over SD on that fight) at mitigation.

Finally... consider this as progression for how much hit/exp you can support:
1) No hit/exp - just take whatever your gear lets you have while focusing on reforging to crit.
2) 6% hit/12% exp - this is the cap for 92 mobs, some of which appear with boss fights. Note you dont go for 7.5% hit because it's not worth capping hit without hard capping exp for almost everything.
3) 7.5% hit/15% exp - this is the final goal and may require t15 and beyond to reach. This will be awesome as it will certainly maximise your awesome bear dps.

Don't worry about hit/exp cap as a bear until you can do 7.5% hit and 15% exp... 7.5 exp is not worth aiming for as a goal.

As for this fight, I open with hotw (int pot and sp weapons) while the monk tanks, to allow 8 people (3 healing but a smite priest) to burst over 100k dps for the hero opener. Then I growl/weapon swap (saves on gcds as while you weapon swap you can hit growl and get into bear form) and build up rage so when im tanking, i have full rage. Then it's a case of maintaining maximum uptime on SD, popping SI about 8 seconds before I go in. I really dont get hit much doing this on the fight.

Stone guard is bad for bears as our mastery is worthless versus the bleed, but on all other fights bears rule (elegon, for example, FR is buffed 50% so I tend to FR over SD on that fight) at mitigation.

Finally... consider this as progression for how much hit/exp you can support:
1) No hit/exp - just take whatever your gear lets you have while focusing on reforging to crit.
2) 6% hit/12% exp - this is the cap for 92 mobs, some of which appear with boss fights. Note you dont go for 7.5% hit because it's not worth capping hit without hard capping exp for almost everything.
3) 7.5% hit/15% exp - this is the final goal and may require t15 and beyond to reach. This will be awesome as it will certainly maximise your awesome bear dps.

spike damage on gara'jal comes from the spirit realm not from the boss. Spiritual grasp does an average of 50k to its primary target. If that target is the tank or a voodoo doll, the other two in the trio take 35K. If all three (both dolls and the tank) are targetted simultaneously (all the spirits cast simultaneously), then all three targets will take 120k damage. This is why interupting in the spirit realm is important as well as killing the spirits

1) No hit/exp - just take whatever your gear lets you have while focusing on reforging to crit.
2) 6% hit/12% exp - this is the cap for 92 mobs, some of which appear with boss fights. Note you dont go for 7.5% hit because it's not worth capping hit without hard capping exp for almost everything.
3) 7.5% hit/15% exp - this is the final goal and may require t15 and beyond to reach. This will be awesome as it will certainly maximise your awesome bear dps.

You can Hit/Exp cap for raids in 463 gear. It's actually a good idea because it provides consistent Rage generation, which is far better than spikier Rage generation.

Slightly offtopic: How are you guys maintaining 100% uptime of SD? Most I can get is 66.6% due to 6 sec duration 9 sec recharge.

That's correct.

However on bosses with taunt swaps or periods where they don't autoattack you (Feng, Will, Elegon) your uptime should be much, much higher. On will specifically you should have almost 100% uptime when the dude is actually meleeing you.

Even on fights where you tank the whole time, you can hypothetically maintain SD uptime near 100% since some bosses tend to channel or casts something periodically. For example, Wind Lord, you tank the boss and your other tank tanks the adds, you can maintain pretty high sd uptime since he stops autoattacking during wind blade and his channeled ability.